The problem of subjective modality in the FG model 249positions of commitment with respect to the SoA described in the utter-
ance.
3.1. Conditionality
Hengeveld (1988: 236) proposes to use conditionality as an absolute crite-
rion for the subjective-objective distinction, and argues that objective
modality can occur in the protasis of conditional constructions, whereas
subjective modality cannot.
This absolute interpretation of the conditionality criterion may work for
the distinction between modal adjectives and adverbs,^4 but it is not an ade-
quate account of the behaviour of modal auxiliaries in conditional contexts:
subjective modals can occur in conditionals, but their interpretation is af-
fected by the conditional context. Subjective modals in the protasis of
conditional constructions invariably become echoic (see also Palmer 1990:
182): they do not express the current speaker's opinion, but echo an opinion
that has been voiced in or is implied by the preceding discourse. For in-
stance,
(7) In distilling a statement of theme from a rich and complicated story, we
have, of course, no more encompassed the whole story than a paleontologist
taking a plaster mold of a petrified footprint has captured a living bronto-
saurus. A writer (other than a fabulist) does not usually set out with theme
in hand, determined to make every detail in the story work to demonstrate
it. Well then, the skeptical reader may ask, if only some stories have themes,
if those themes may be hard to sum up, and if readers will probably dis-
agree in their summations, why bother to state themes? (CB)
In (7), the epistemic position expressed by may is crucially not the posi-
tion of the ‘sceptical reader’ who uses the conditional construction, but an
opinion voiced by some other speaker which the ‘sceptical reader’ echoes
in his conditional construction without committing himself to it. Thus, sub-
jective modals are not excluded in conditional contexts, but their
interpretation is affected by the conditional.
This semantic effect does not occur with non-subjective modals like the
modal of ability in (8): the interpretation of can’t in the conditional in (8) is
not different from its interpretation in non-conditional contexts.
(8) Phillips: Oh, I think it’s just the–the same thing as the sign that they had
during the campaign, that everything else was secondary to the economy. If
Bill Clinton can’t deal with the economy in the next year or year and a half,